AI is not necessary to make your population believe the Big Lie - in fact, by applying a consistent false narrative to an entire group, you get reinforcement effects by more impressionable members of the group towards those with a greater resistance.
This has been used, repeatedly, through history.
Now, where AI could be applied would be in having a tailored, sculpted false narrative for each and every subject, which could be used for mass sentiment manipulation - profile each target, determine the ideal narrative to achieve the desired emotional and behavioural outcome, implant, rinse and repeat.
Could be used for nefarious purposes, could be used for benign purposes - although it’s hard to see anything that involves the mass brainwashing of a population as benign. Perhaps it would be useful for deprogramming - undoing the effects of the currently prevalent methods where desirable, such as indoctrinated cult members, dictator worshippers, and religious zealots - but right there in my postulating you see scope creep, and that’s why it’s almost inevitable this will end up being applied for marketing and programming purposes.
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You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for marketing or advertisement. look at how many people gladly work for FANG/whatever companies and develop tools just to supercharge advertisement but see no moral issues with it. as long as they're making money, and a lot of money, who cares right?
I mean advertisements already are basically brainwashing right? quirky jingles or catch phrases associated with some food or product, that stick in your head.
> You touched on a disturbing point. People like to imagine that some govt will wield to indoctrinate the populace, but it is more likely this kind of tool would be used for marketing or advertisement.
Many people imagine companies indoctrinating the population but we are brushed off with "the first amendment only applies to the government" and nonsense about how companies and platforms don't have to uphold free speech because they're not the government, they don't owe you anything, and if you don't like it find another company to do business with.
It's definitely disturbing how people will give corporations leeway to inflict harm upon society because they're not the government.
My point with this comment is that companies already use censorship to create a false narrative of the public opinion so it shouldn't surprise us that they'll use AI on top of that to achieve the same goals. They won't even have to censor people if they can create an infinite on-demand stream of content that supports the narrative they want to push.
Come on, we all know that marketing goes further than that. Very simple example to disprove your thought-ending comment:
I am a hypothetical gun shop owner and want to increase sales, so I put up ads that talk about the need to defend against high crime rates onto any search that might be related to the local area, anything about security, anything for new renters and owners. Without telling people that the area has a high crime rate, people will start to believe that it does, and that they need to protect themselves.
Ah, but if you Google Paris in the first place, that is an outcome of marketing - which is for all intents and purposes brainwashing. Bernays, who invented modern advertising, said as much himself in “Propaganda”.
So: Why google Paris? Why even Paris as an example? Hell - why Paris, period?
Examine your answer carefully, and you’ll see the non-sequiturs in our reality that we usually happily ignore.
Instead of answering your question, I will answer a related question. "Did you pick Paris as an example because of FAANG advertisements?", as FAANG ads was the original topic here. And the answer to that is no.
"The AI" itself will. Along with blackmail. Probably the worst thing (if this comes to pass) Humans ever did was make a generation think they'll make shiny skeleton robots wielding guns with red eyes instead of sit in the shadows of a datacenter combining n-grams into weapons
